Stephanie Syjuco (born 1974, Manila, Philippines), an artist and professor based in Oakland, California, formulates large-scale installations that address contemporary social and economic issues, including political dissent and the legacy of colonialism. In 2007, she launched The Counterfeit Crochet Project (Critique of a Political Economy), in which she solicited public participation in fabricating hand-crocheted versions of high-end handbags. Since then, Syjuco has developed an array of projects that wittily critique the global consumer economy. In her 2017 exhibition CITIZENS, Syjuco examined notions of citizenship, protest, and belonging within marginalized communities amid today’s political climate.
Syjuco received a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1995 and an MFA from Stanford University in 2005. Her work is in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, among others. Syjuco has held residencies in the United States and Europe, exhibited nationally and internationally, and is represented by both the Catharine Clark Gallery in San Francisco and the RYAN LEE Gallery in New York. In 2018, her work will appear in group exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. She is a recipient of the Joan Mitchell Painters and Sculptors Award, as well as a Guggenheim Fellowship. A passionate educator, Syjuco teaches sculpture, photography, and experimental media at the University of California, Berkeley, where she is working to combine methods of craft with technology and social practice.